ORDER OE PACHYDERMATA. 
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less numerous. They are sometimes found alone : the Dutch call 
these rodeurs, rovers or prowlers. They were formerly much 
more common in the environs of the Cape of Good Hope than they 
are at present. Thunberg relates that a hunter told him that he 
had killed, in these regions, four or five a day, and that regularly. 
He added that the number of his victims had many a time 
amounted to twelve or thirteen, and even to twenty-two in one 
day. This may perhaps have been but a braggart’s idle boast. 
Still they abound in the vast interior of Africa. 
The African differs much from the Asiatic Elephant in that 
which concerns its relations to Man. He does not require of the 
former what he obtains from the latter. The African Elephant 
has, in modern times, been rarely hunted but for the food which its 
flesh supplies, or more possibly for the sake of its tusks. 
In shooting the African Elephant guns and poisoned arrows are 
made use of. Formerly it was customary to entice it and make 
it fall into pits, at the bottom of which it impaled itself on sharp- 
pointed stakes. Levaillant has given some very interesting details 
on this sort of sport, but want of space forbids us from here 
repeating them. 
Delegorgue, a French traveller, has published, more recently, 
some curious accounts of the habits of African Elephants. Among 
these animals, gathered together in troops, there prevails a spirit 
of imitation which sometimes makes them all do exactly what the 
first has done. Delegorgue relates on this subject the following 
episode of one of his hunting excursions. A band of Elephants 
was coming towards him and his two hunting companions. He 
shot at the first of the troop ; the Elephant fell, sinking on its 
knees. A second Elephant was then killed, and fell on its knees 
over the first. Another of the sportsmen then shot in his turn, and 
the Elephant aimed at fell in the same manner over the two others. 
All the Elephants fell thus on their knees even to the very last of 
them (eleven in all !) under the fire of the sportsmen.* 
The African Elephant has not always been a useless being, fit 
only to be a target for adventurous sportsmen. In ancient days, 
when the empire of Carthage was flourishing, this immense living 
machine was turned into a powerful auxiliary. The Carthaginians 
* This does not accord with the experience of our numerous British sportsmen 
who have shot so many African Elephants ! — Ed. 
K 
